Myth Busters About Nappy Hair

1) It’s ugly, unkempt, dirty, unattractive or unprofessional. Ridiculous. Nappy, African textured hair is not by default, any of these things, no more than naturally straight, curl or any other texture of hair. If someone feeds you this bull, they’re trying to project their own personal biases, insecurities, misperceptions, misinformation, and/or straight up ignorances about nappy hair that they have and get you to buy into them too. Early in your journey you may actually have to come to terms with how you feel about your texture. Just know that every day, thousands of women all over the world are reclaiming their natural beauty and you can too. Women from all walks of life have stopped living the lye and learning to embrace their unaltered texture. Black doctors, lawyers, police officers, military personnel, nurses, teachers, students, bankers, office workers, accountants, sales clerks., counselors, school principals, politicians etc. You name the profession or occupation and there are women who wake up every day with nappy hair and are successful at what they choose to do without grief while proudly wearing their nappy hair. Don’t believe me? Check out the popular hair boards and websites around the Internet such as cNappymenow.com, Nappturality.com or Naturallycurly.com.

2) It doesn’t grow. Yeah? Well check out List #6 and drool! But really, let’s address this. Hair grows for a while, enters a rest stage when it stops growing and then it sheds to make room for a new hair in the follicle. Now if your stopped growing that would basically mean you’d be bald. …PERIOD. It’s what it does. If it didn’t, every time a hair shed and didn’t grow back, over time, the density (number of hairs on your head) would then out and you’d eventurally be bald. At any given time over 90 percent of your hair is actively growing. The remaining hair is resting and shedding.

So when you get to a point that it seems as if your hair isn’t growing, that just isn’t true. It means that you’re some how losing your ends as fast as they’re growing. If your hair grows ¼ inch a month, but you’re constantly getting your hair trimmed by the same amount, your length is going to stagnate. This can be really problematic for people whose hair grows slowly. Combine this with short growth cycle (the number of years a hair grows before it sheds) and some people will seem to have hair that just doesn’t grow.

Although your growth cycle is hereditary, and there’s nothing you can do to alter how fast or how long your hair grows before it sheds, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re doomed to have perpetually short hair. But that also doesn’t mean that you’re destined to have hair that grows down to your knees either. With the proper care and maintenance, you most likely find that you’ll be able to gain more length as a natural than you ever could with a relaxer. The secret is learning how to minimize breakage, especially to your ends. To do that, you’ll need to learn how to care for your hair and style it in ways that promote length retention. For details on retaining length, see List #1) Things that Break Your Hair Off.

3) You can’t get a man with nappy hair. Hmmm… if a man don’t want you because you got nappy hair, then he probably wasn’t worth being with in the first dang place.

4) You can’t get a job with nappy hair. Too many women out their with jobs in all kinds of industries and professions to make this be true

5) Natural hair is unsuited for special occasions like getting married, other formal occasions or events.

6) Nappy hair is strong. Looks can be deceiving. Our hair type is quite fragile because it has fewer cuticle layers. It twists and turns making irregular loops, bends and coils as it grows. Every twist and turn creates weak spots and irregularities in the diameter all along the hair shaft. Cuticles are often raised, as opposed to flat, and as each hair takes its own separate route the cuticles from different strands can snag one another. As a result, harsh manipulation can easily cause breakage. In addition, the nappy structure of our hair, combined with shrinkage, can cause the shaft to loop around itself and create single strand knots which can also catch on other hairs and create larger knots and tangles that can cause breakages when combing, brushing or styling.

7) Nappy hair is hard to take care of. Well, it can be when you first start out and you’re trying to get to know you hair. It can also be hard when you have mentally transitioned your mind to believe that your highly textured nappy hair is just as beautiful or more beautiful than straight hair. It can also be difficult to take care of if you’re constantly trying to make it do things it doesn’t want to do or can’t do. Like when folks want to stop shrinkage in its tracks or make it have curl/coil definition when it doesn’t naturally have any. When you work against the nature of your hair, you make taking care of and styling it harder than it has to be. Once you get the hang of it, accept it for what it is, nappy hair is no harder to take care of than straight hair.

8) Everyone can grow super long hair. Well not everyone can. See this article here When Nappy Hair doesn’t Grow Long…Then what?